From that evening Ishmael entered upon a new phase of his London visit.  He told himself, when seriously considering the situation now and then, that he was certainly not in love.  He was deeply interested in Blanche Grey, but if this were being in love, then was that emotion very different from anything the books always led one to expect.  For instance, had the question been posed him by some wizard potent to arrange the lives of humans, whether he would sooner let Cloom or Miss Grey slip away from him, he would not have hesitated.  His values were not in the least upset.  He felt certain things in spite of them, that was all.  There was an uncomfortable emptiness about a day on which he did not see her, and when at night he waited for her outside the shabby stage door of the Strand Theatre his heart would go thump-thump in a manner over which he had no control, but which seemed so very remotely connected with himself as he understood the term that he made no account of it.  Killigrew said very little to him on the subject once he had found that he really did not like being chaffed about the fair Blanche, but it at once lowered Killigrew in Ishmael’s estimation, and yet made him less certain about his own feelings, that he knew Killigrew did not share his enthusiasm.

Blanche had one of those definite personalities there is no overlooking, that people, especially men, either adore or actively dislike.  Killigrew had never said he did not like her, but Ishmael felt the fact none the less certainly.  And, as a matter of fact, Killigrew himself was puzzled by Miss Grey.  He was certain enough that she was technically “good”—­what Carminow called “all right”—­and he admitted her charm, but to him the over-emphasis she laid on everything, as on that action of hers in coming down for the lamp, made the charm of no avail.  He went to the house in Cecil Street a few times with Ishmael and then washed his hands of the affair.

When Ishmael was not allowed in the presence, then Killigrew still took him round the town and was not unamused to notice that his tastes had begun to alter.  He was more interested in the personal note, less in things.  Horticultural shows no longer lured him, polytechnics flaunted in vain.

He went once to the House of Commons and heard a debate on Russell’s abortive Reform Bill, which was to sound the knell of that Minister’s career.  Ishmael heard Gladstone in the Bill’s defence defying an attack by Lowe, whilst Mr. Disraeli leant back with a slight smile on his face, which was a blot of pallor beneath his dark, oiled ringlets.  Ishmael was stirred, yet in him something felt amazement and disappointment.  These were only men after all, not demigods, and some of them were peevish, some rude, some bored and inattentive.  The whole thing seemed somehow childish; it was difficult to believe, except later when Bright’s golden tongue was speaking, that in this place the nation was governed....  Afterwards he was with the crowd, borne helplessly along, that wrecked the Hyde Park railings in their anger that the hastily constructed Ministry of Derby should still let Reform hang in air.  Yet all these affairs of the nation only affected Ishmael from the outside, for he was beginning to be at his most personal.